Posts Tagged ‘Jason Holtman’

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Normally when videogame execs are the subject of countless headlines, it’s because they said something fighty or controversial. Or maybe they got an inner-thigh tattoo. Not former Steam brainguy Jason Holtman, though. Truth be told, he hasn’t really said much of anything for quite a while. The man just won’t stay still, is the thing. First he helped pioneer Steam at Valve, then he moved on to Microsoft to focus on “making Windows a great platform for gaming.” But suddenly he left mere months later, never to be seen again. OR SO WE THOUGHT. Now he’s surfaced at Oculus as “head of platform.” When reached for comment, Oculus would not explain who will be the body, nor whether the arms and legs will be made of robot lions.

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Whoops, looks like Microsoft’s Ken Lobb neglected to tell me something. Shortly after publishing our interview from D.I.C.E.’s red carpet wherein I specifically mentioned the hiring of former Steam director of business development Jason Holtman as a sign that Microsoft was embracing PC gaming, I received an anonymous tip that he was no longer with the company. One quick LinkedIn check later and, yep, he’s out. That, um, doesn’t bode well.

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Hmmm. Well, OK then. So remember how Microsoft is closing down its increasingly irrelevant PC games marketplace once and for all? I would hope so. We just posted about it, like, an hour ago. (Apologies to the rather sizable goldfish portion of our audience; that comment was insensitive.) Well, you’d think that plus a very overt focus on Xbox One would imply total abandonment of our hotrod tech hive art house sector of the gaming industry. But in a legitimately shocking twist, you’d be wrong. Microsoft just hired former Steam director of business development Jason Holtman for one reason and one reason only: “to make Windows a great platform for gaming.”